The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “A dead girl,” Ryan said dryly. He took out what looked like an ordinary penlight and climbed back on the railing. The three watched him examine the beam. He turned to the paramedics and McCalester. “One of you lift her,” he said.

  The two paramedics looked at each other.

  “Grab her legs and lift her!”

  McCalester stepped forward and did it.

  “Just hold her a minute,” Ryan said. He slid the rope along the beam. “Okay,” he said, dropping himself off the railing to fetch something else out of the evidence bag.

  McCalester looked at the waiting paramedics and shrugged. Ryan returned to the railing. He had put on what looked like a metallic glove and slowly began to run it over the beam from left to right until he reached Stocker, and then he stepped behind her to continue running his hand along the beam.

  “What is that?” one of the paramedics asked.

  “Fingerprint detector. It’s lifting the prints and recording them.”

  Ryan ran the gloved hand over Stocker Robinson’s corpse. From the prospective of the paramedics, it looked like some perverted sexual act performed on a dead girl. They grimaced as he cupped under her breasts and moved over her rear end and between her legs. He paused for a few moments at her left rear jeans pocket. With his uncovered hand, he slipped his fingers into the pocket. For the moment, he decided not to reveal what he had found.

  He stepped down and carefully slipped off the FD.

  “You think this was a murder?” McCalester finally blurted.

  “Let’s just say I have my doubts,” Ryan replied, “which is what I’m trained to have,” he added. “You’d better cordon off the area.”

  “What about her?” McCalester asked.

  “She stays awhile.”

  “You want to leave her dangling here like that?”

  “Until the ME arrives. It’s an unattended death, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Just keep everyone away. Extend the perimeter,” Ryan ordered.

  “What do we do?” one of the paramedics asked him.

  “Nothing for a while. The ME will be the one who will tell you to remove the body from the scene and take it to the lab for an autopsy.”

  They nodded, still quite wide-eyed.

  “A lot of nasty stuff in a community so peaceful someone would think he had stepped into God’s backyard,” McCalester muttered. “The Garden of Eden itself,” he added.

  Ryan glanced back at Stocker Robinson’s corpse still swinging slightly from his examination.

  “Looks like we have a snake in paradise,” he said.

  After McCalester called the ME, he watched Ryan videotape everything and begin a systematic examination of the immediate area. It was behind the railing on the porch floor that he lit up with some emotional reaction. McCalester had been off to the side watching him work and saw the added excitement in Ryan’s movements, including his practically lunging for something in his EB.

  “What do you have?” he called to him, keeping his six feet of distance from the detective.

  “A footprint.”

  “So?”

  “It’s not hers,” Ryan said.

  “So?”

  Ryan glanced at him.

  “So, it’s relatively recent, and it’s the print of someone with a larger foot, and it’s behind the corpse. Use your imagination,” Ryan suggested.

  McCalester shook his head. “It’s probably Mickey’s.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Ryan said, and continued to work the scene until he told McCalester it was time to speak to the Robinsons. They found the two of them hovering side by side on the settee in the living room. Esther had a cold wet cloth over her forehead and eyes. Mickey sat beside her, his body turned and twisted in the wake of his agonizing.

  “I need to ask a few questions,” Ryan said. Esther didn’t move. Mickey straightened up and sat forward. He glared at Ryan, and Ryan thought, In this father’s mind, we’re all responsible. Maybe he’s right.

  “After we left today, you heard nothing from your daughter?”

  “No. If we had, we would have called McCalester.”

  “And you heard no one in the house, no one back there, no sounds?”

  “I had the television on most of the time, trying to keep myself occupied. Esther was preparing dinner. The dog was barking, but she’s always barking. We’ve got this cat that enjoys teasing her.”

  “Did your daughter ever threaten to do something like this?”

  “No,” Esther said, ripping the cloth from her head.

  Ryan nodded. “I’m just asking what we call routine questions in situations like this, ma’am.”

  “Routine,” Mickey muttered. “Can’t imagine something like this being someone’s routine.”

  Ryan glanced at Esther. She looked as if she were on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

  “Mr. Robinson,” he said softly. “Can I see you privately for a moment?”

  Esther began to rock back and forth. Mickey looked at her and then got up and walked with Ryan into the vestibule.

  “I don’t know how long a look you were able to take back there, but the rope…”

  “What about it?”

  “Was it something you had here?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess we have rope here. In the garage. What difference does it make?”

  “I have to…”

  “Routine questions, I know. Anything else?”

  “Tell me what you did after you saw your daughter.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “How close did you get to her? Did you go around her, try to take her down, what? I’m sorry. I need to ask.”

  “The moment I saw her, it felt like my heart dropped into my stomach. I guess I got very dizzy and nauseous and sank to my knees for a few moments. Then I got up and stepped in front of her, looked into her face, and knew she was gone. I hurried into the house and called McCalester.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t step behind her on the porch or try to move that rope, take her down, anything?”

  “It was pretty obvious that it was too late,” Mickey said.

  Ryan shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  “Everyone was on her,” Mickey Robinson continued, looking at Ryan but really looking past him. “Me, too. But she never had friends. I know she was trying. That’s what got her in trouble in the first place, I’m sure. Kids can be cruel to each other, you know.” His eyes brightened and focused on Ryan now. “Kids can be the cruelest. They drove her to this. The whole damn community drove her.”

  Ryan nodded, remembering his own youth, the discrimination, the hard times he had experienced. “Okay. I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said. “I truly am, Mr. Robinson.”

  Nothing he had said up to this point was as rife with feeling. Mickey Robinson softened a bit, nodded, and walked back to the living room.

  Ryan opened the door and stepped out. He saw all the vehicles in the road.

  “A little circus,” McCalester muttered, waiting for him on the stoop.

  Word of mouth was still one of the fastest means of spreading news, Ryan thought, as people living nearby and many from the community continued arriving to witness what was happening. They grouped on the street and waited to hear every little detail. Friends of the Robinsons arrived to give comfort, including some of the people for whom Esther worked as well as Mickey’s fellow county highway employees.

  After the ME, Dr. Gordon Howard, a man in his mid-fifties, completed his preliminary examination, Stocker Robinson was taken down and covered on a stretcher which was then brought to the ambulance. It quieted down the onlookers, who stood transfixed on the white sheet until the stretcher was loaded and the ambulance drove away.

  Ryan joined Dr. Howard at Howard’s vehicle.

  “What do you think?” he asked him.

  “Seems pretty cut and dried to me,” Howard replied. Ryan noticed he avoided looking directly at him when he responded.


  “I was able to ascertain the depth of the trauma under the ropes. The line is a little too straight. I think there’s some possibility she was strangled first, don’t you?”

  “I’ll see, but I don’t think the difference is enough to reach any conclusion like that.”

  “The indentation in the beam is not deep enough for someone of her weight to have stepped off that railing and dropped herself,” Ryan added. “People, even those who do it willingly, can’t help but struggle. The body insists. I didn’t see evidence of that rope burning into the beam. That suggests strongly that she was already gone when she was attached.”

  Dr. Howard looked at him askance. “I’ll do what I do as best I can,” he replied. “The rest is your problem.”

  He got into his vehicle and followed the ambulance.

  “Well?” McCalester said, coming up beside Ryan. “Looks like your time here is nearly finished, I guess. You’ve got your killer and all.”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said.

  “You’re not going forward with your insistence to interview Mrs. Ross now, are you?”

  “Used to be a saying years ago,” Ryan replied, walking to the police vehicle.

  “Here we go again. What saying?”

  “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings, and I haven’t heard her singing yet.”

  McCalester clamped his lips together and drove in silence back to the hotel.

  “Call me when Preston Ross calls you,” Ryan told him as he got out.

  “What makes you think he’ll call me? You told him where you were staying,” McCalester said.

  Ryan smiled. “Really, chief, you don’t have to be a trained CID agent to know that he’ll call you before he’ll call me to see if this is all over, right?”

  McCalester grunted and drove off.

  As soon as Ryan got into his room, he began to hook up his forensic devices. He started by running the prints he had lifted from the railing and from Stocker Robinson’s body. Results were just coming back when the phone rang.

  He smiled to himself. He had handled this well. He had cornered the big shots and played it all well. He was even feeling a bit arrogant about it.

  He hit the receiver button and was surprised to see Lieutenant Childs calling from state headquarters instead of McCalester.

  “Ryan, I expected to hear from you after what’s just come through regarding the situation down there.”

  “How did you get that information so fast, Lieutenant?”

  He had the sense that he was being watched, evaluated, his every move in this investigation being monitored.

  “It came directly from our people in the county district attorney’s office. It should have come from you.”

  “I have one more important interview to conduct before I could give you a significant preliminary report, sir,” he replied.

  “Why is that necessary?”

  “The results are not conclusive on today’s discovery, Lieutenant.”

  “Um…this murder case…it involves an Abnormal…a potential natural childbirth?”

  “I believe it does, sir.”

  “I see. Well, someone cracked your file, Ryan.”

  “What do you mean, Lieutenant?”

  “They know about your natural birth,” he replied, avoiding calling him an Abnormal.

  “Oh?”

  “You know I tried to keep that discreet, and I wanted you to have this case,” he added.

  “Yes, sir, I appreciate that.”

  “Well, it’s compromised you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been given orders from the adjunct general’s office to replace you, Ryan. I’m sorry. I have Detective Sacks on his way to Sandburg. He’s coming from another case he’s just concluded and should be there in two hours. Please greet him at the airport and fill him in on what you have.”

  “I don’t understand. Why am I compromised?”

  “We don’t want there to be any suggestion of prejudice, Ryan. If there is an Abnormal involved…”

  “That’s not fair, sir. I haven’t done anything to indicate any prejudice. I’ve been extremely objective.”

  “I’m sure you have been, but believe me, Ryan, this is for your benefit as much as for the benefit of the investigation.”

  “Well, can I remain and assist? I still have some work in progress here,” he added, looking at his fingerprint report as it continued to come through on his printer.

  “I think it’s better if you give Sacks what you have and simply return to headquarters, Ryan. I have something else I’d like you to get into right away. This doesn’t reflect on your work, Ryan. It’s not going to influence considering you for a promotion. In fact, your ability to see the wisdom of all this can only help toward that goal. And faster than you’d expect,” he added.

  He was being bribed to walk away from the case.

  It brought his blood to a boil.

  When would this prejudice end? Would it ever end? Was he only fooling himself believing he could achieve any success in the CID? To hold his birth against him! It was as primitive as some twentieth-century prejudice that forced a good black detective off a case involving the investigation of an important white man.

  He could hear McCalester’s “I told you so.” What were some of his exact words? “Your questioning someone as important and influential as Mr. Ross and his wife might be politically incorrect,” he had said. “It’ll get around, and just questioning someone can taint him or her. Bertram Cauthers, the senior partner in Ross’s firm, is very connected. I’d be extra sure before I tapped on those doors.”

  Well, he had tapped, and it had been heard as far away as Central Headquarters.

  “Very good, sir,” he said, unable to keep out his tone of defeat and disappointment, and he was sure Childs saw it in his face as well.

  “I knew I could count on you to do the right thing, Ryan. You’re going to go far. Trust me.”

  Far, he thought, but in what direction?

  He sat thinking after he hung up. He could feel the steam flowing out of his ears. Anger was broiling his brain.

  He ripped the fingerprint findings out of the jaws of his printer and perused them.

  For crying out Christ, he thought. If I turn this over to Sacks, it will be buried for sure.

  An idea came to him. It was defiance, but technically he still had two hours on this case, didn’t he? Why waste them sitting around a hotel room?

  Without hesitation, he seized his bag and charged out of the hotel room. Minutes later, he was on the road to the Ross residence.

  Fourteen

  A sharp pain that felt as if a string of barbed wire had been dragged through her stomach and out her vagina woke Natalie with a spasmodic jerk that caused her to sit up and cry out. The pain was gone as quickly as it had come. Nevertheless, she pressed her hands to her lower abdomen and continued to sit up, catching her breath. Sweat beads were all along her temples and down her neck. She could feel the trickle over her breasts and onto her stomach. It produced a quick chill and made her shudder.

  For a long moment, she couldn’t remember where she was. Her memory was that fogged over. The moonlight gave the room a yellow glow, bouncing off the mirror and creating long, rubbery, unfamiliar silhouettes over the walls. It put her in a small panic until her orientation returned and she began to breathe easier. However, now her throat felt so dry she thought she would rip it apart swallowing. She reached over to switch on the light on the nightstand and then turned to get out of bed and go to the bathroom.

  Her legs felt as if she had been running for days. The moment she moved them, deep aches radiated up from her calves, over her knees, and into her thighs. She groaned and reached around to rub her lower back.

  “My God,” she muttered, “I feel like I’m a hundred and ten years old.”

  What time was it? She looked to her wrist, surprised to discover her watch was gone. When did she remove that, and why? She looked at the nightstand, but it
wasn’t there. Where had she put it? Why was she having so much trouble with her memory?

  When she concentrated on remembering, audio images passed through her mind, seemingly unrelated, voices, someone crying through the walls, a shrill scream, and then soft murmuring, loud whispers, doors closing. What did it all mean?

  She stood, feeling wobbly, so wobbly, in fact, she had to sit and get her equilibrium back before she attempted to stand again. It took so long for the room to stop spinning she grew more and more frightened.

  “I need help!” she cried at the walls. Supposedly, somewhere embedded in them, she recalled, were microphones designed to carry her voice to Mrs. Jerome. She waited but heard nothing, no steps outside her door, no voice returning to tell her that some assistance was on its way. “Hello? Anyone there?”

  Suddenly, she felt quite silly talking to walls. Why wasn’t there just an ordinary intercom in this room? Frustrated, she was on her feet again. She used the nightstand to steady herself and then took some steps forward and reached for the wall. She paused to catch her breath and wait until her heart stopped pounding. She was right by the window now and could see how clear the night sky was. There wasn’t even the wisp of a cloud against the dark blue. The full moon looked positively immense. It looked as if it had been drawn at least halfway closer to the earth. In fact, the illumination flowing from it made the lights on the driveway and on the poles over the grounds look insignificant, drowned out. The driveway itself resembled a sheet of glass. For a few moments, she was mesmerized the way a moth might be hypnotized by candlelight. She stared down at the front of the building.

  Remembering why she had risen in the first place, she started to turn from the window, when a dark figure appeared at the base of the front steps below. She could see it was a woman. There was something vaguely familiar about the shape of her head, her shoulders, that entire posture and demeanor. Moments later, Mrs. Jerome appeared beside her. The two stood conversing for a minute or so before they were joined by a man, who spoke briefly and then headed for a vehicle. When he turned, his face was caught in the moonlight, and she remembered it was her doctor, Dr. Prudential.

  Mrs. Jerome and the woman beside her watched him start his car and drive away. They spoke a few moments longer, and then the woman walked around another vehicle and opened the door. The light from inside the car plus the moonlight was as effective as a small spotlight on her face. She even turned and looked up at Natalie’s window, making it that much easier to recognize her.